Transforming DH Pedagogy

Ashley Caranto Morford,Kimberly O’Donnell,Kush Patel,Arun Jacob,Nadine Boulay

doi:10.16995/dscn.379

Abstract

This essay cluster features two essays by students and faculty collaborators describing the ways in which new forms of pedagogical practices are expanding and changing the field of Digital Humanities. Each essay takes a different approach that reveals the importance of pedagogy in bringing social justice to the digital humanities. One pedagogical approach lies in the design and development of a game that shows the experience of transgender, non-binary, and gender nonconforming youth, and the other emphasizes the significance of the Digital Humanities Summer Institute in offering a space to develop and teach a theory of inclusive and activist digital pedagogy. Taken together, these essays demonstrate that transforming DH into a politically engaged, socially just, and inclusive field is an ongoing process of teaching and learning in new and traditional places, forms, communities, organizations, and institutions. Kimberly O’Donnell responds to these papers as a graduate student and Digital Fellow at Simon Fraser University, offering her perspective on the challenges and necessity of creating these transformative pedagogical spaces. ResumeCe regroupement de dissertations se compose de deux dissertations ecrites par des etudiants et membres de faculte collaborateurs qui decrivent les facons dont de nouvelles types de pratiques pedagogiques etendent et changent le domaine des Humanites numeriques. Chaque dissertation adopte une approche differente qui demontre l’importance de la pedagogie pour l’integration de la justice sociale dans les humanites numeriques. Pour une approche pedagogique, il s’agit de la conception et du developpement d’un jeu qui montre l’experience de jeunes transgenres, de jeunes non-binaires et de jeunes dont le genre est non conforme, tandis que l’autre approche souligne l’importance du Digital Humanities Summer Institute(Institut d’ete des humanites numeriques) dans l’offre d’un endroit pour le developpement et pour l’enseignement d’une theorie pedagogique numerique inclusive et activiste. Ensemble, ces dissertations demontrent que la transformation des humanites numeriques en un domaine qui est politiquement engage et juste au plan social et inclusif est un processus permanent d’enseignement et d’apprentissage dans de nouveaux lieux et dans des lieux traditionnels, ainsi que dans des formes, communautes, organisations et institutions. Kimberly O’Donnell repond a ces dissertations en tant qu’etudiante de cycle superieur et en tant que Digital Fellow (chercheur) a l’Universite Simon Fraser, en donnant sa perspective sur les defis et sur la necessite de creer ces lieux pedagogiques transformateurs. Mots-cles: justice sociale; humanities numeriques (HN); pedagogie; numeriques; activisme numeriques; transgenres; technologie des jeux video

Highlights

In the past decade, calls to #TransformDH have consistently highlighted problems of exclusion and lack of diversity within the Digital Humanities (DH), stressing the necessity for DH practice, research, and pedagogy that is grounded in an antioppression praxis and that “[...] enact[s] critique that is at once transformative and transformed” (Ruberg 2018, 418)
This paper outlines the work of the Gender Vectors of the Greater Vancouver Area (GVGVA or GV) project—a team comprised of trans/non-binary and queer-allied researchers at Simon Fraser University, who, since 2015, have been working to develop an educational video game that makes visible the vectors of vulnerability, safety, and resiliency of transgender, non-binary, and gender nonconforming (T/NB/GN) young people in the Greater Vancouver Area (GVA) (Spade 2011)
At 2019’s Digital Humanities Summer Institute (DHSI), we facilitated a full-day workshop on anti-colonial DH pedagogy and praxis, wherein we discussed how colonial ideologies and methods are naturalized within mainstream DH practices and, equipped with and accountable to this increased awareness, we reconceptualized how DH instructors might approach the process of teaching digital skills and digital tools in ways that destabilize or reject these ideologies and methods. We focused this discussion through a set of three interrelated framings: 1) media archaeology, in which we examined the often colonial and racist histories and ongoing political economies of the computer-based tools most commonly employed by teachers in DH classrooms; 2) communityfocused digital storytelling, in which we discussed the ethics of teaching emerging digital humanists how to create stories in computer-based platforms and distinct community contexts; and 3) online public knowledge writing, in which we talked about the politics of using Wikipedia as a pedagogical tool in our classrooms to teach students about transforming public and open source online platforms towards mobilizing historically silenced and marginalized knowledges

Summary

Introduction

Calls to #TransformDH have consistently highlighted problems of exclusion and lack of diversity within the Digital Humanities (DH), stressing the necessity for DH practice, research, and pedagogy that is grounded in an antioppression praxis and that “[...] enact[s] critique that is at once transformative and transformed” (Ruberg 2018, 418).

Results

Conclusion